Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Narwhals: Unicorns of the Sea

Transcript

Narwhals: Unicorns of the Sea · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, we're coming to Salt Lake City, Utah and Phoenix,
0:03
Speaker 1: Arizona this fall. Yeah, October, we're going to be at
0:06
Speaker 1: Salt Lake City's Grand Theater and then the next night
0:09
Speaker 1: October will be in Phoenix. And we added a second
0:13
Speaker 1: show to our Melbourne show, right, that's right, a second
0:16
Speaker 1: earlier show in Melbourne. So you can get all the
0:19
Speaker 1: information for all of these shows at s y s
0:22
Speaker 1: K live dot com. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know
0:27
Speaker 1: from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
0:35
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant.
0:39
Speaker 1: We're alone again naturally, but we're talking about in our walls.
0:46
Speaker 1: So things aren't all that bad because they're pretty interesting. Yeah.
0:51
Speaker 1: I think I wanted to do this a long time ago. Uh,
0:55
Speaker 1: and it just sort of fell off my radar and
0:58
Speaker 1: then it popped back up on my radar. That is
1:01
Speaker 1: a heck of a story, Chuck, and this was written.
1:05
Speaker 1: I want to shout out former colleague Katie Lambert. And Katie,
1:09
Speaker 1: even though you do not listen, perhaps a friend of
1:12
Speaker 1: yours might congratulations because Katie just got married. Oh hey, congratulations, Katie,
1:18
Speaker 1: I'm married to uh it looks like a really good guy.
1:21
Speaker 1: And uh they're now traveling and uh whish Katie all
1:24
Speaker 1: the best. Yep, congratulations dudes, and thank you for writing
1:29
Speaker 1: this article, which was seemingly intended for elementary school students.
1:34
Speaker 1: Knew you get to say something. I was not going
1:36
Speaker 1: to say anything. It's adorably written. Let's say that. Well,
1:40
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, she really liked nar walls, I
1:42
Speaker 1: think so. I think she lobbied to write this one.
1:44
Speaker 1: In fact, So nar walls is defined as follows. I'm
1:51
Speaker 1: kidding nar waals wail with a horn pretty much actually,
1:56
Speaker 1: and I there are a lot of similarities here between
1:59
Speaker 1: walrus is, which we did in our walls, but they're
2:02
Speaker 1: not They're not very closely related if at all. Am
2:06
Speaker 1: I correct? Like walruses have nothing to do with whales,
2:10
Speaker 1: and then our wall is a type of whale and
2:12
Speaker 1: much the same as like a beluga whale, right I believe. So, Yeah,
2:17
Speaker 1: they're small, they're pretty fast, well comparatively small, I should
2:20
Speaker 1: say pretty fast. Um, they live in extremely cold waters.
2:26
Speaker 1: But the thing about the nar wall, the thing that
2:28
Speaker 1: everybody knows about the nar wall, the thing that makes
2:30
Speaker 1: the nar wall so unique, is that it has a tusk,
2:35
Speaker 1: a unicorn horn basically that is frequently well over half
2:41
Speaker 1: the length of its of its body. Yeah, I mean
2:44
Speaker 1: some of those. So they can grow up to nine feet.
2:46
Speaker 1: That's crazy. Yeah, because a male narwhale gets up to
2:48
Speaker 1: fifteen feet. So so you've got the fifteen feet of
2:52
Speaker 1: the small fast whale and then another nine ft of
2:56
Speaker 1: unicorn tusk sticking out. And it's a pretty interesting appendage frankly. Yeah,
3:02
Speaker 1: which you know, we'll save that for the third act.
3:05
Speaker 1: You know what they say, you introduce a unicorn horn
3:08
Speaker 1: in the first act, it has to kill somebody in
3:10
Speaker 1: the third. Is that right? Well, that's the old saying
3:14
Speaker 1: about a gun in a movie. Okay, if you see
3:17
Speaker 1: a gun in the first act, it'll kill someone in
3:19
Speaker 1: the third. I always thought things just appeared randomly in movies.
3:24
Speaker 1: Is that not the case materialized? Yeah? No thought behind it, right,
3:28
Speaker 1: no reason, no rhyme. So the nar wall throughout history
3:32
Speaker 1: has been a very um I guess, not misunderstood, but
3:38
Speaker 1: fascinating to people because it just looks so strange. If
3:42
Speaker 1: you've seen regular seafaring creatures, which already look a lot
3:45
Speaker 1: of them look very strange, but imagine back in like
3:48
Speaker 1: the Vikings days, when they see a nar wall stick
3:51
Speaker 1: that thing out. It really would get people's attention, and
3:55
Speaker 1: so it was written about in literature. Um at some
3:59
Speaker 1: point that people thought that there was a land equivalent
4:02
Speaker 1: equivalent to every marine animal, So like if there was
4:07
Speaker 1: something at sea, there was a land version. Do you
4:09
Speaker 1: remember we did like a Sea Monsters episode we talked
4:12
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah. So the idea here is that that
4:14
Speaker 1: there may be a unicorn, a horse unicorn, because there
4:19
Speaker 1: was one in the sea. Yeah, and even if you
4:21
Speaker 1: found the narwhal in the sea, it wouldn't just prove unicorns,
4:25
Speaker 1: it would actually probably back it up. At the time, Yes,
4:28
Speaker 1: so there was this widespread belief that there was such
4:30
Speaker 1: a thing as unicorn. And then the fact that the
4:32
Speaker 1: Vikings were going around trading with the the Inuit up
4:36
Speaker 1: north around Greenland, um and getting narwhal tusks and bringing
4:41
Speaker 1: them back and people were buying them as unicorn horns.
4:46
Speaker 1: It definitely it was like evidence like there you go,
4:48
Speaker 1: there's such thing as unicorns. We've never seen one, but
4:50
Speaker 1: I've I got the tusk right here in my chalice
4:54
Speaker 1: to counteract any poison somebody may have tried to give me. Right.
4:58
Speaker 1: That was one of the things that was used for interesting. Yeah,
5:02
Speaker 1: and let's see I got two more. You ready for these?
5:05
Speaker 1: Hold your socks on because I'm about to knock them off.
5:08
Speaker 1: The Habsburg dynasty, their scepter had a narwhal tusk handle.
5:15
Speaker 1: Ivan the terribles um staff, I guess he had a
5:19
Speaker 1: walking stick made of narwhal tusk um. And if you
5:25
Speaker 1: look on the Royal coat of Arms for pharmacists in
5:29
Speaker 1: England you you will see a unicorn. All of those
5:33
Speaker 1: are narwhal tusks or references to narwhal tusks. And how
5:37
Speaker 1: magical they were thought at the time because people bought
5:41
Speaker 1: and sold and used them as unicorn horns. Yeah. The
5:47
Speaker 1: more you know, right, is half the battle. So let's
5:52
Speaker 1: talk about this, this funny, fascinating creature. Uh. You'd want
5:56
Speaker 1: to go to Canada perhaps to view them. Um, maybe Greenland,
6:02
Speaker 1: maybe small barred m Thro's some seeds in there while
6:05
Speaker 1: you're at it. Uh, And they mainly try and navigate
6:10
Speaker 1: what are called how do you pronounce that? Pollinia, pollinias, pollinias.
6:17
Speaker 1: I think so yes, I actually prefer that too. Pollinias,
6:22
Speaker 1: which Katie described as the equivalent of an oasis. In
6:25
Speaker 1: the Arctic, there these open water pools where otherwise there
6:29
Speaker 1: is ice and there is a lot of good feeding. Uh.
6:33
Speaker 1: This it's like a buffet table in those things. Yeah,
6:36
Speaker 1: because we're talking like little oayses in ice. And when
6:39
Speaker 1: we say ice creaming ice forever and ever and ever,
6:43
Speaker 1: because nor Walls live in some of the coldest water
6:47
Speaker 1: is imaginable on planet Earth. Um. So when one of
6:52
Speaker 1: the in their whales, which means they have to breathe
6:55
Speaker 1: air like we humans, right, Um, So they have to
6:58
Speaker 1: travel from these things to these things, and they do
7:00
Speaker 1: so under ice. So they basically just navigate poll nias
7:05
Speaker 1: or poly nias um from place to place, follow their
7:10
Speaker 1: food that way. Yeah. Another name that you might have
7:14
Speaker 1: heard is corpse whale, and this came from there. The
7:17
Speaker 1: adults have this kind of modeled black or dark gray
7:21
Speaker 1: and white coloring and some people might say it looks
7:25
Speaker 1: like like they're dead, right like liver or mortis. Do
7:31
Speaker 1: you remember that where like you know this, the blood
7:34
Speaker 1: just pools and collects at the body like in the
7:37
Speaker 1: skin of the corpse. Yeah, so corpse whale is a
7:41
Speaker 1: is a nickname. Uh kind of a not a very
7:44
Speaker 1: nice one. Well no, actually, the word nar wall means
7:47
Speaker 1: corpse whale in Dutch and Danish. Yeah, nar is like
7:51
Speaker 1: the old Norse term for corpse and wall or vall
7:55
Speaker 1: is whale corpse white, like nar waal literally means corpse
8:00
Speaker 1: whale because up close they look like a dead body. Interesting, yeah,
8:06
Speaker 1: and kind of gross. So they don't have a dorsal fin,
8:09
Speaker 1: but they do have a dorsal ridge. A dorsal fin
8:12
Speaker 1: would would be um. They may have had one at
8:14
Speaker 1: one point, but it bumps into that ice, so now
8:17
Speaker 1: it's a dorsal rit. Well, I say, now it might
8:19
Speaker 1: have always been, but I'm just speculating. No, I think
8:23
Speaker 1: you're right that natural selection might have taken care of that. Yeah,
8:26
Speaker 1: because not only does it allow them to swim under
8:28
Speaker 1: ice and follow their food, it keeps them from um
8:33
Speaker 1: being attacked by orcas. Orcas have a full dorsal fin,
8:36
Speaker 1: so they can't get under ice or as close to
8:39
Speaker 1: ice as or as um nar walls can, so they
8:42
Speaker 1: can escape their predators and chase their food, which is
8:45
Speaker 1: like two things that natural selection would definitely be all about.
8:49
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's stay in by it then, Yeah,
8:52
Speaker 1: I think you should. They hang out in groups UM
8:54
Speaker 1: a lot of times, twenty to thirty, but when they
8:57
Speaker 1: migrate there can be hundreds or even thousands of them together.
9:01
Speaker 1: And the ladies are a little bit smaller, about pounds
9:05
Speaker 1: and ten tott the dudes get up to about pounds
9:10
Speaker 1: and up to fift Yeah, but I mean that's not small,
9:14
Speaker 1: but for a whale, that's not It's not big at all.
9:18
Speaker 1: And they are fast, man, they're fast. And I also
9:21
Speaker 1: read I read this really great article in Smithsonian. Um.
9:26
Speaker 1: Let me see if I can find the name of
9:28
Speaker 1: it um in search of the Mysterious Narwhal. And they
9:33
Speaker 1: talk about this um, these two biologists who are dedicated
9:38
Speaker 1: to like tracking and trapping and tagging and um pegging
9:43
Speaker 1: up with right keeping up with nar walls to try
9:47
Speaker 1: to estimate the population because no one has any idea
9:50
Speaker 1: how many narwhals they are there are, and so you
9:53
Speaker 1: don't know if they're dying off quickly or if there's
9:55
Speaker 1: a lot more than we know. Who knows, um, but
9:58
Speaker 1: it was they were talking about how hard it is
10:01
Speaker 1: to capture these these whales to tag them, and how
10:05
Speaker 1: hard it is even to hunt them too, because they're
10:07
Speaker 1: so fast. They're fast, and they're real skittish, like they'll
10:10
Speaker 1: take off at the drop of a hat. They're fast
10:12
Speaker 1: and furious, too fast, too furious. Their tokyo drift. So
10:19
Speaker 1: this is one of the interesting creatures that scientific whose
10:22
Speaker 1: scientific name is all wrong. Um. The scientific name is
10:26
Speaker 1: minodin mana serros, which means to one horn. Yes, and
10:32
Speaker 1: if you're gonna come up with a cleric for your
10:35
Speaker 1: D and D game, you could do worse than that
10:39
Speaker 1: one horn. I like that monoddin mano serros. I take
10:43
Speaker 1: your bag of plenty. Erry Lewis sounded. That's literally the
10:49
Speaker 1: only thing I remember from like the two times I
10:51
Speaker 1: play dn D take your bag of plenty, which you
10:55
Speaker 1: probably can't even do. People are gonna say you can't
10:56
Speaker 1: take a bag of plenty. Oh yeah, we'll get some
10:59
Speaker 1: mail on that, But that's actually not true. One tooth
11:02
Speaker 1: one horn is not true at all. They have no
11:04
Speaker 1: horns and they have two teeth. That tusk, which we'll
11:08
Speaker 1: talk about later again in the third act. That is
11:11
Speaker 1: a tooth. It is which we can't say anything more
11:14
Speaker 1: about it apparently, but just believe us it's a tooth.
11:18
Speaker 1: What it does eat? What do they eat. They eat cold, cold,
11:22
Speaker 1: loving fish. Sounds pretty delicious to me. So these are
11:27
Speaker 1: some of my favorite fish. Prepare for this cod salmon,
11:32
Speaker 1: which I mean like it doesn't even have to be
11:34
Speaker 1: dead yet, and I'll eat the salmon. God, harring have dude.
11:38
Speaker 1: Raw salmon is about as good as it gets. Yeah,
11:41
Speaker 1: but you gotta bite into a live fish. Yes, I
11:44
Speaker 1: would herring, which is great, especially pickled Halibit wonderful anyway.
11:50
Speaker 1: Shrimp and squid. Yeah, I'm not huge on squid these days,
11:54
Speaker 1: but all the other ones i'd be very happy with.
11:56
Speaker 1: Weren't you big on squid because it's a squid and awesome,
12:02
Speaker 1: I'm not. I'm just not big on squid. I don't
12:04
Speaker 1: know the last time I had it, but I remember,
12:06
Speaker 1: I think I've just had too much rubbery squid is
12:08
Speaker 1: what it is, you know, Yeah, I hear you. So
12:15
Speaker 1: the problem is this, Chuck, Well, it's not really a problem.
12:17
Speaker 1: It's a problem for you and me if we're trying
12:19
Speaker 1: to track nar walls. But a lot of those fish,
12:22
Speaker 1: especially depending on the season they um, live on the
12:26
Speaker 1: bottom of the ocean, right, So that means that if
12:30
Speaker 1: you are in our wall, you've got to get down
12:32
Speaker 1: to those fish. And these things have actually been tracked
12:38
Speaker 1: diving a mile down. Yeah, that's a long way, a
12:43
Speaker 1: mile down. So some of the early trackers that they
12:47
Speaker 1: put on these way these um nar whales. Before they
12:50
Speaker 1: realize how deep they dove, the track the tracking device
12:54
Speaker 1: would break. It just smashed under the pressure. But the
12:58
Speaker 1: narwhall's just going down eating some cod and coming back
13:01
Speaker 1: up and then going down and eating some cod a
13:03
Speaker 1: mile under the surface. Is just it's just it's crazy
13:08
Speaker 1: to me. I'm I'm impressed by that. Yeah, And Katie
13:11
Speaker 1: talked a lot about the diving patterns not being understood.
13:14
Speaker 1: It sounds to me when reading through them, is that
13:16
Speaker 1: they're uh like not random, but there there are so
13:20
Speaker 1: many different reasons to dive, and depending on the time
13:24
Speaker 1: of year and where the fish are. Like, I don't
13:27
Speaker 1: know that there is a pattern. Well we yeah, we
13:29
Speaker 1: just don't know yet. Yeah, exactly. So you want to
13:33
Speaker 1: take a break, yes, all right, we're going to take
13:36
Speaker 1: a break and when we come back, we're going to
13:39
Speaker 1: resume speaking about in our walls, all right, Chuck. So
14:09
Speaker 1: you said, like there doesn't seem to be a pattern,
14:12
Speaker 1: or we don't understand the pattern with diving. There's a
14:14
Speaker 1: lot we don't understand about in our walls. But what's
14:17
Speaker 1: interesting is that it seems like it might not just
14:20
Speaker 1: be because we have so little access to them, because
14:23
Speaker 1: they live in these extraordinarily remote climbs that are really
14:29
Speaker 1: hard for humans to survive in. It's not just that,
14:32
Speaker 1: it's that they are also supposedly very very smart as well,
14:36
Speaker 1: like dolphin levels smart. Yeah, they um. They said that
14:41
Speaker 1: they do some things that only apes do, like recognize
14:45
Speaker 1: themselves in a mirror, and she said understand abstract ideas? Yes,
14:52
Speaker 1: what what does that mean? So the closest thing I
14:55
Speaker 1: could see is that with understanding understanding abstract ideas, so
15:01
Speaker 1: how we encapsulate two in the written number two and
15:06
Speaker 1: that that that too is an abstract concept that doesn't
15:09
Speaker 1: actually mean to but it does to us because we've
15:11
Speaker 1: all agreed on it. Apparently, uh odonto sets, which is
15:16
Speaker 1: the toothed whale that that they belong to, they've been
15:20
Speaker 1: shown to understand abstract concepts like that they've been They've
15:24
Speaker 1: been also found to be able to pass this stuff
15:27
Speaker 1: along from one generation to the next, which means that
15:31
Speaker 1: they have actual culture. Their culture survives, they have an
15:34
Speaker 1: actual culture. It's not just their their genes driving them
15:38
Speaker 1: to find more fish. Um, go have sex with that
15:41
Speaker 1: other narwhal. Nothing like that. They're actually thinking and passing
15:45
Speaker 1: on like the stuff and the tricks that they learned
15:47
Speaker 1: to the younger generation. So they're exceedingly smart too. Yeah.
15:52
Speaker 1: And odonto uh adonta seed that is a toothed whale
15:56
Speaker 1: with danto I guess ing the tooth part right, like
16:01
Speaker 1: ord is it a danta seat, I said, a dante
16:04
Speaker 1: sette like machete. I think it's a danta seat, But yeah,
16:08
Speaker 1: you're probably gonna be wrong. Who knows. Uh. They echo locate,
16:11
Speaker 1: which is interesting like bats do. So what they do
16:15
Speaker 1: is they you know, it's very dark down there where
16:17
Speaker 1: they swim a mile down and they still need to
16:20
Speaker 1: find these fish, so they produced the sound. They don't
16:24
Speaker 1: they don't have vocal cords like we do. Um. They
16:27
Speaker 1: think although they don't know. Like you said, there's been
16:29
Speaker 1: so little study because they're hard to catch and track
16:33
Speaker 1: and trace. But they think they might make sounds to
16:36
Speaker 1: their nasal passages and then focus that in uh in
16:41
Speaker 1: there in this fatty structure called the melon, and then
16:44
Speaker 1: beam it out and then of course it because echo location.
16:48
Speaker 1: It travels as a sound wave bounces back after it
16:51
Speaker 1: hits like a salmon um back to their skull. They
16:55
Speaker 1: think the lower jaw are directly into the skull depending
16:58
Speaker 1: on the frequency, and then they go to salmon. Let
17:00
Speaker 1: me go spirit, yes, spirit, No they don't. They just
17:06
Speaker 1: probably Yeah, they go after it with their mouths and
17:11
Speaker 1: save it for me because I picture nine feet of
17:16
Speaker 1: a big sushi. Right, But think about it, like if
17:19
Speaker 1: they just spear salmon on the end of this thing,
17:21
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, I hadn't thought this true. I can't
17:24
Speaker 1: really actually get to this now. Let me scrape it
17:26
Speaker 1: off on the ice and then hop up there with
17:29
Speaker 1: my mouth and there you go. It seems like a
17:32
Speaker 1: lot of problems, you know. Yeah, like they'd find it
17:34
Speaker 1: dead normal with like twelve fish spirit. Right, it's like
17:37
Speaker 1: the saddest thing ever. Um, So you talked about the
17:42
Speaker 1: echo location. Did you say that that fatty deposits called
17:45
Speaker 1: the melon? The melon? It's so weird, but it's pretty
17:50
Speaker 1: It's it's understandable that they would echo locate because they're
17:53
Speaker 1: diving down into some some areas where there's like no
17:56
Speaker 1: light whatsoever. But they think that in addition to um
18:00
Speaker 1: finding food like salmon or whatever, they use echolocation for
18:04
Speaker 1: communication to just basically simply to move through the water,
18:09
Speaker 1: and either depending on the species or species are capable
18:12
Speaker 1: of multiple frequencies. They if they are if they're trying
18:16
Speaker 1: to reach something from a long distance, they'll use a
18:19
Speaker 1: low wavelength echo. If they're trying to find something nearby,
18:24
Speaker 1: they'll use a high frequency echo. Um. It's pretty interesting.
18:28
Speaker 1: And supposedly their brains started to grow from based on
18:32
Speaker 1: the fossil record, around the time they would have started
18:34
Speaker 1: to echolocate. That makes sense, Yeah, it does, because they're
18:37
Speaker 1: getting that much more information and they need to handle
18:40
Speaker 1: it process it. Hence they need a bigger brain. Supposedly
18:44
Speaker 1: their brain is second only to ours in size relative
18:48
Speaker 1: to body mass. Okay, relative to body mass, right, all right,
18:53
Speaker 1: that makes sense because when I first read that, that
18:56
Speaker 1: makes total sense. So they think that they they don't
18:59
Speaker 1: know how long they can live, but there are some
19:02
Speaker 1: studies that indicate that they could live to be over
19:05
Speaker 1: a hundred years old. There's one study um on the
19:08
Speaker 1: eyes on nar while eyes, which is sort of sort
19:13
Speaker 1: of a creepy way to figure this out, but a
19:16
Speaker 1: hundred and fifteen years old, and they aren't sure how
19:19
Speaker 1: many there are UM, but in Baffin Bay apparently they
19:25
Speaker 1: found over thirty thousand of them in Baffin Bay alone,
19:29
Speaker 1: which sounds like a lot, but UM, when you look
19:32
Speaker 1: at the scope of animal populations, it's not no and
19:36
Speaker 1: they I mean they honestly have no idea. That's what
19:39
Speaker 1: this UM, these marine biologists are doing is is trying
19:42
Speaker 1: to figure out how many there are so that they
19:46
Speaker 1: can say, well, this is how many you should hunt UM.
19:49
Speaker 1: This is the maximum number that should be hunted a year.
19:52
Speaker 1: Because there are UM and we'll talk about it later,
19:55
Speaker 1: but there are there is legal narwhal hunting UM. But
19:59
Speaker 1: it's it's the from the work of these people who
20:01
Speaker 1: are who are trying to track them to make sure
20:04
Speaker 1: that the population that we're not inadvertently ruining this population UM.
20:10
Speaker 1: That's one of the main reasons that they're doing, in
20:11
Speaker 1: addition to like just studying them. And they found a
20:14
Speaker 1: lot of stuff out already, like they mate, remember those
20:18
Speaker 1: poll nias. I mean, another way to put it is
20:21
Speaker 1: their cracks in extensive sea ice, right and that's where
20:26
Speaker 1: they mate. Another way put it is their sex pools
20:29
Speaker 1: they are, there's sex pools polynia's um and so they'll
20:35
Speaker 1: mate in there, but they'll also frequently die in there
20:38
Speaker 1: too because there those the areas that they inhabit are
20:43
Speaker 1: so cold chuck, so like negative sixty degrees fahret height
20:47
Speaker 1: in some areas right that that's the wind temperature of
20:50
Speaker 1: the surface, So it is really cold um that that
20:55
Speaker 1: ice will form quickly. And if you're a norwhale and
20:59
Speaker 1: you get stuck in the your toast, you're dead. Or
21:02
Speaker 1: if the ice these pollinia's ice over and there's not
21:06
Speaker 1: another one nearby, again, you're dead because you have to breathe,
21:10
Speaker 1: so you can't. You're gonna drown before you make it
21:12
Speaker 1: to the next pollinia. So they actually live in a
21:15
Speaker 1: really dangerous like right on the edge of survivability in
21:20
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. And they think that they are
21:24
Speaker 1: very genetically um homogeneous, and they think that the reason
21:28
Speaker 1: why is that back in yes, basically, which is surprising
21:32
Speaker 1: for how smart they are, but they they think they're
21:36
Speaker 1: genetically homogeneous, and they think the reason why is that
21:38
Speaker 1: there were multiple die offs of narwhal's getting trapped in
21:43
Speaker 1: these frozen over pollinias, so much so that it had
21:46
Speaker 1: like a major impact on the diversity of their population,
21:50
Speaker 1: and they faced an evolutionary bottle knick at one point,
21:53
Speaker 1: and then once the ice agended, they started to expand again,
21:56
Speaker 1: but they were a little dim as a result. That
22:00
Speaker 1: should be a new t shirt. I'm not in bred,
22:04
Speaker 1: I'm genetically homogeneous. Right, nice? Oh? Uh? Should we take
22:11
Speaker 1: another break? Sure? Let's man, because I think if I'm
22:15
Speaker 1: not mistaken, we're going to come back and talk about
22:17
Speaker 1: the tusk. Right. The tusk in Act three is going
22:20
Speaker 1: to kill somebody? Will it be you? All right? Josh?
22:50
Speaker 1: Everyone has been speared by a tusk. It was me.
22:54
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to carry on alone for the next
22:56
Speaker 1: ten years. It's really just a flesh wound. No, no, no,
23:01
Speaker 1: you're you're dead, feel betta. Uh. So Katie makes a
23:06
Speaker 1: point to talk about human teeth for a second. We
23:08
Speaker 1: won't go down that rabbit hole too much, um, except
23:11
Speaker 1: to say that human teeth are hard on the outside
23:15
Speaker 1: to protect the soft pulp and nerves and blood on
23:19
Speaker 1: the inside. Uh. And that is very important distinction, because
23:22
Speaker 1: the narwhale is the opposite of that. Which is really interesting,
23:27
Speaker 1: was that a rabbit hole with the teeth. No, not
23:30
Speaker 1: not Chuck's version. Okay, Oh, I see what you're saying,
23:33
Speaker 1: because I think you did a great job. Thanks, But yeah,
23:37
Speaker 1: you set it up perfectly, Chucked. The normal has the
23:39
Speaker 1: opposite of that, like this sensitive part is on the
23:43
Speaker 1: outside and the hard part is on the inside, which
23:46
Speaker 1: is insane. Yeah, it's really interesting. There are ten million
23:50
Speaker 1: tiny little holes on the surface of that tusk. Uh.
23:55
Speaker 1: And even though human teeth have these same holes are
23:57
Speaker 1: covered with enamel. But there are different theories on why
24:01
Speaker 1: the tusk would need to be sensitive, and they sound
24:05
Speaker 1: pretty good to me, Like that it's a sensor, Yeah,
24:08
Speaker 1: that that basically it's it's detecting things like salinity, water,
24:13
Speaker 1: temperature currents, maybe sure um or it might be able
24:18
Speaker 1: to um to detect atmospheric pressure above or barometric pressure
24:24
Speaker 1: above the water, see where the weather is changing. There's
24:28
Speaker 1: all sorts of things that that it could be or
24:30
Speaker 1: it could do, and maybe it does multiple things. However, uh.
24:35
Speaker 1: Katie points out rightfully that very few females have these
24:38
Speaker 1: tusks at all. So if it's how important could it
24:42
Speaker 1: be to their survival? If if most of the females
24:45
Speaker 1: don't even have them, right, so that led Darwin, and
24:48
Speaker 1: apparently his his hypothesis is still the most widely held one,
24:53
Speaker 1: that it's a secondary sex characteristic, like um, like moose
24:57
Speaker 1: antlers or something like that, like or how dear male
25:01
Speaker 1: deer have horns, like check out the size of my tusk,
25:04
Speaker 1: ladies that. But also it's like, hey, I'm a dude,
25:08
Speaker 1: you don't have these. You're a lady kind of thing, right,
25:10
Speaker 1: Why would the females have them at all? Then? I
25:12
Speaker 1: don't know that's the weird thing, because something like of
25:15
Speaker 1: female normalls have these tusks. Yeah, I mean, some people
25:20
Speaker 1: have said that they use them to duel with one another,
25:23
Speaker 1: but um, there hasn't been a lot of evidence to
25:27
Speaker 1: point to that. No. And plus now that we know
25:29
Speaker 1: that they're actually sensitive on the outside, that just undermines
25:32
Speaker 1: that even more. Yeah, they sometimes to still say they
25:34
Speaker 1: might use it as a way to establish dominance at
25:38
Speaker 1: least maybe it's different than fighting, right, And they do
25:41
Speaker 1: touch tusks, but supposedly it's gently and it's a it's
25:45
Speaker 1: a behavior called tusking. It's not hostile or aggressive. It's
25:49
Speaker 1: something else and we're not quite sure what it is.
25:51
Speaker 1: But they don't think it's fighting sometimes, they've said, and
25:56
Speaker 1: there's no evidence for this that they use the tusk
25:58
Speaker 1: for breaking through ice or spearing prey, like I said earlier,
26:02
Speaker 1: But I don't. I don't know if those hold water. No.
26:06
Speaker 1: I think it's probably most likely that it has developed
26:08
Speaker 1: into some sort of antenna basically. But we didn't even
26:12
Speaker 1: talk about what the tusk actually is. Yeah. Well, I
26:15
Speaker 1: said it's a tooth early on, but it's a little
26:17
Speaker 1: bit more than it's a supertooth. It is a supertooth again.
26:20
Speaker 1: It's like a nine foot long tooth that starts out
26:23
Speaker 1: in the narwhal's mouth and just grows upward and punctures
26:27
Speaker 1: its lip and just starts growing out and that screws out. Yeah,
26:32
Speaker 1: it does. The cork shows out. It's a a spiral.
26:34
Speaker 1: It's one of the only spiral teeth in the animal kingdom. Yeah,
26:38
Speaker 1: and the only straight one, which is really interesting because
26:40
Speaker 1: when you think of walruses or elephants um and all
26:44
Speaker 1: that ivory is is god that curved tusk, and this
26:48
Speaker 1: one is straight like a unicorn, which is what makes
26:50
Speaker 1: it look so interesting. I think for sure. Yeah, it's
26:53
Speaker 1: straight and spiral. That's a unicorn, right, there. Uh, and
26:58
Speaker 1: there can be two of them too, right, yeah, because
27:00
Speaker 1: so the remember you said the name of the Latin
27:04
Speaker 1: name of the narwhale is incorrect because they don't just
27:08
Speaker 1: have one tooth. They actually have two teeth. It's just
27:11
Speaker 1: one of them turns into a tusk. Well, sometimes I
27:14
Speaker 1: guess their genes can get all messed up because again,
27:16
Speaker 1: remember they have that evolutionary bottleneck um, and the other
27:20
Speaker 1: tooth can start growing too, so they might have two
27:22
Speaker 1: tusks that are actually they're not symmetrical, they're actually um,
27:28
Speaker 1: they actually are just basically two versions of the same thing.
27:32
Speaker 1: But it's pretty rare when that happens allegedly. Yeah, and
27:35
Speaker 1: here's the fact of the show for me that we
27:39
Speaker 1: haven't done a fact of the show and while actually no,
27:41
Speaker 1: we haven't drink. Uh. The tusk is flexible. When I
27:48
Speaker 1: see that thing, it looks like a a broadsword, but
27:52
Speaker 1: this thing can actually bend up to a foot in
27:54
Speaker 1: any direction without breaking and goes borrowing. Did you think
27:59
Speaker 1: they were No? I didn't really give much thought to it. Yes,
28:02
Speaker 1: I think I did. I think I did assume they
28:04
Speaker 1: were stiff, but then once I heard that they were flexible,
28:07
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, of course they'd have to be. That
28:09
Speaker 1: would hurt to just have that thing brittle and break
28:11
Speaker 1: off at the drop of the hats. You mean you
28:13
Speaker 1: haven't been going around in life wondering about the norwhal tusk,
28:17
Speaker 1: right and the rigidity. But think about that, man, if
28:19
Speaker 1: you bend it almost a foot back, I'll bet that
28:22
Speaker 1: would I feel like bending your fingernail back to the
28:26
Speaker 1: degree you know, you think I would be worse. Even
28:29
Speaker 1: if that thing is as sensitive as it is, is
28:32
Speaker 1: it supposed to be well and it can break, So
28:34
Speaker 1: that's just like, oh man, yeah, but I wonder if
28:39
Speaker 1: the thing is not essential for survival. Is a narwhal
28:42
Speaker 1: without a tusk fine after it's broken off, or maybe
28:46
Speaker 1: they're like, thank god, right now I can eat like
28:49
Speaker 1: a normal whale and things getting in the way. I
28:52
Speaker 1: felt so self conscious about it. Uh The norwhal is
28:55
Speaker 1: under threat because, like you mentioned and you went, hunters
28:59
Speaker 1: are allowed to hunt them because it's something that they've
29:01
Speaker 1: done since time immemorial, and uh so they are allowed
29:06
Speaker 1: to still hunt them in certain numbers. Sometimes they do
29:10
Speaker 1: this with the old fashioned way with harpoons, and sometimes
29:14
Speaker 1: they have rifles and um, I'm not sure how often
29:17
Speaker 1: this happens, but Katie does say sometimes they will shoot
29:20
Speaker 1: an ar wall only to have it sink dead to
29:22
Speaker 1: the ocean floor or escape wounded. I'm sure that with
29:25
Speaker 1: all hunting that is a possibility. Yeah, And I think
29:29
Speaker 1: they found very recently there was like a bunch of
29:32
Speaker 1: slaughtered narwhale um who had just had their band name,
29:36
Speaker 1: had their tusks carved out, but the rest was just
29:40
Speaker 1: left to rot. So it's just a total waste by poachers.
29:44
Speaker 1: And they've done a pretty good job of cutting down
29:47
Speaker 1: the illegal narwhale um trade. I've rey trade yet it's
29:53
Speaker 1: considered that, but I guess in the United States you
29:56
Speaker 1: can still sell it if it was in the country
30:00
Speaker 1: prior to the band, and I'm sure that probably extends
30:03
Speaker 1: to all ivory. I think some like an narwhal tusk
30:07
Speaker 1: sold for it was like a double tusk or something.
30:11
Speaker 1: It was actually down a lot because it used to
30:13
Speaker 1: be a lot more back, especially in the medieval age. Yeah. Well,
30:17
Speaker 1: if you meet someone at a party and they have
30:20
Speaker 1: they brag about their brooch made of narwhale ivory, punch
30:24
Speaker 1: them in the face. You get them chuck. Uh. The
30:30
Speaker 1: Inuits though too. They do actually eat um, the top
30:34
Speaker 1: layer of skin and blubber. They're not um, they're not
30:37
Speaker 1: the poachers that we're talking about. No. No, that that
30:40
Speaker 1: stuff is called muck tuck or mock talk. And it's
30:45
Speaker 1: extraordinarily essential for the um Native Inuits survival up there
30:50
Speaker 1: because they don't get a lot of sunlight, not a
30:53
Speaker 1: lot of limes growing around, and it's a excellent source
30:57
Speaker 1: of vitamin C and um. They actually we are able
31:00
Speaker 1: to survive up there by eating this stuff. So yeah,
31:04
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of good reason for them to hunt,
31:07
Speaker 1: let alone just the cultural stuff. Um. But yeah, the
31:10
Speaker 1: poaching is unjustifiable no matter who's doing it. Yeah, and
31:14
Speaker 1: then you know there that's the human side of things.
31:16
Speaker 1: There's also polar bears, walruses, orcas. They will all try
31:21
Speaker 1: if they can catch those fast dudes and ladies swimming
31:25
Speaker 1: under the water. They will definitely dine on them if
31:27
Speaker 1: given the opportunity, right, which again that orca has that
31:31
Speaker 1: dorsal ridge, not a fin, so they can conceivably get
31:34
Speaker 1: away from orcas. Here's the thing. What happens when the
31:37
Speaker 1: climate changes and the sea I starts to melt a
31:40
Speaker 1: little bit all of a sudden, those orcas have been
31:43
Speaker 1: waiting there like I've been waiting a thousand years for
31:45
Speaker 1: this minute, and they go get you, and you're in
31:48
Speaker 1: our wall and you're in trouble and it's actually a
31:50
Speaker 1: big threat against our walls. Right now, they were um
31:54
Speaker 1: voted the mammal you know, yeah, the marine mammal least
31:59
Speaker 1: likely to survive melting ice flows. Wow, because they're just
32:04
Speaker 1: so they're so dependent on them. Like, wherever the ice is,
32:08
Speaker 1: that's where the nar walls are at any given point
32:10
Speaker 1: in the year. That's where there their food is. That's
32:13
Speaker 1: that's where they they procreate, That's that's where they live.
32:17
Speaker 1: And if there's not ice flows, they're in trouble. Sad well,
32:21
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be a stuff should episode if we didn't
32:23
Speaker 1: end it on a bummer. That's right. Uh. If you
32:27
Speaker 1: want to know more about nar walls, you can type
32:30
Speaker 1: that word into the search bar at how stuff works
32:32
Speaker 1: dot com. And since I said nar whale, it's time
32:35
Speaker 1: for listener mayo. I'm gonna call this oh interesting follow
32:44
Speaker 1: up from a long time ago. Hey guys, I'm from
32:46
Speaker 1: a Doncaster, England, which who knows, maybe that's pronounced as
32:54
Speaker 1: far as I know Denny's. He's from Denny's. Uh uh,
33:00
Speaker 1: it's in the north of the country, he says. I
33:02
Speaker 1: work for my local council as a repair and maintenance man,
33:04
Speaker 1: do a lot of driving around, so your show really
33:06
Speaker 1: breaks up my day. And the folklore episode you spoke
33:09
Speaker 1: about swearing in the English, who's sticking two fingers up?
33:14
Speaker 1: You know, like we shoot the bird and they stick
33:16
Speaker 1: the two fingers up like an inverted peace sign or
33:20
Speaker 1: backwards peace sign. And he says, I have the reason
33:23
Speaker 1: for you right here. This salute dates back to the
33:26
Speaker 1: English long bowman who fought the French during the Hundred
33:29
Speaker 1: Years War uh, which is not a hundred years by
33:33
Speaker 1: the way. The French hated the English archers, who used
33:35
Speaker 1: the long bow with such devastating effect. Any English archers
33:38
Speaker 1: who were caught by the French had their index and
33:41
Speaker 1: middle finger chopped off from their right hand, a terrible
33:44
Speaker 1: penalty for an archer. Yes, Daniel, it surely is. I
33:50
Speaker 1: love that. It's the worst penalty for an archer. This
33:53
Speaker 1: led to the practice of the English archers, especially in
33:56
Speaker 1: siege uh siege situations, taunting the French enemy with their
34:00
Speaker 1: continued presence by raising two fingers and the two fingered
34:04
Speaker 1: salute meaning you haven't cut off my fingers. Pa ha
34:08
Speaker 1: finger ears Mm. That interesting. Yeah, I love that one.
34:12
Speaker 1: I hadn't heard that one before. That's what he says.
34:14
Speaker 1: And he says, by the way, guys have a son.
34:17
Speaker 1: I'm to have a son on the tenth of September. Oh. Nice,
34:20
Speaker 1: he's got it all scheduled out, I guess. So if
34:23
Speaker 1: you read it on the air, shout out to unborn
34:26
Speaker 1: Reggie Joshua Halifax. Great middle name, by the way, actually
34:31
Speaker 1: great name all around. And that's from Daniel Blue Halifax. Nice.
34:35
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Daniel. That was a great letter. It
34:37
Speaker 1: was not from Halifax, no, but his last name is Halifax,
34:41
Speaker 1: so he probably could get a free house there. Right. Yeah,
34:45
Speaker 1: that's a good that's how it works. That's a good
34:47
Speaker 1: dumb joke. If you thank you. If you want to
34:52
Speaker 1: get in touch with us, like Daniel did, ah, you
34:55
Speaker 1: can tweet to us. I'm at josh um Clark. There's
34:58
Speaker 1: also s y s K Pod asked Chuck's at movie
35:01
Speaker 1: crush Pod on Twitter too. I'm on Instagram at joshuam
35:05
Speaker 1: Clark as well. Uh, there's uh Facebook a plenty. Chuck's
35:09
Speaker 1: at movie Crush Pod on Facebook. Right yeah, Snapchatt us
35:14
Speaker 1: do whatever, So I'm not done. There's Facebook dot com
35:18
Speaker 1: slash stuff you should know. There's Facebook dot com slash
35:20
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant. It's a Facebook bananza. You can
35:24
Speaker 1: also send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how
35:26
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. It is always showing this sitter
35:29
Speaker 1: home on the web. Stuff you should have dot com
35:36
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
35:38
Speaker 1: it how stuff Works dot com